Reading the Argo Cycle part 3 - The Human Race is Made Up Entirely of Glowing Geniuses (some initial thoughts on the complete 'The Devil is Dead' trilogy)

Well, I finally read the very last words of the very last book (Argo) of the so-called The Devil is Dead trilogy, which is the novelistic centrepiece to Lafferty's Argo Cycle (the total cycle consisting of the three novels of this trilogy, Archipelago, The Devil is Dead, and More Than Melchisidech: Tales of Chicago, Tales of Midnight, Argo, plus a short novel, Dotty, plus a few novellas, plus a handful of short stories; and, as if all this weren't enough, the cycle tangentially connects to another short novel, The Three Armageddons of Enniscorthy Sweeny, and to a tetralogy known as the Coscuin Chronicles).

These last words of the trilogy that I've read were Lafferty's closing essay explaining the book's alternate endings. It's titled 'AN ESSAY EXPLAINING THE ALTERNATE ENDINGS OF THE BOOK OF ARGO In The Course of Which I'm Obliged to Explain The Detailed Workings of The World Itself' and it's nearly worth the price of the whole trilogy.  We'll come to it another time, however.

But the final words of the first or primary ending of Argo (and really, to me, the true conclusion to the trilogy - the remainder is, though vital, meta) go like this:

"The world is a kaleidoscope, ever-changing, ever-enchanting, did you know that, My Reflection? And one best strides happily laughing and singing through it. And the fact that one is striding through the hot ashes of Hell every step of the way is no reason to be less merry. If one looks down and sees that he is no more than ankle-deep in Hell, let him continue with a happy heart. But if he sees that he is more than knee-deep in Hell, then he must, then he must, what must he do then, pale reflection of me?" 

"I don't know," said the creature with its paler face of Duffey. 

"Maybe that's when he should leave the land for a while and walk on the water," Melchisedech declared. "Remember, Reflection, that man in his original nature was able to walk on water. He is still able to do it, but sometimes he forgets that he is." Then Melchisedech Duffey turned and ran to the city singing happily. 

"I lied to him and I lied to myself," said the unhappy Angel who wore Duffey's face. "No, no, I'm not certain at all which one of them I serve. I'm afraid to be certain or even to think about it. Is it God or the Devil that I serve in my confusion and darkness?" 

But Melchisedech Duffey, singing happily, was into the city in the bright morning. And he didn't hear the creature at all. (Argo, pp. 133-134)

It's a mysterious, beautiful, and hopeful conclusion, yet fraught with a tension that is characteristic of the entire trilogy.  You can easily see why it's often quite difficult to reflect on such a complex, ambiguous work.  But reflect we shall!

I've read the essays by Dan Knight and Robert Whitaker Sirignano on More Than Melchisedech (collected in Feast of Laughter vol. 2) and an unpublished essay by Andrew Ferguson on the Argo Cycle.  These each contain tasty tidbits of insight, but it seems to me that they also each skirt round really tackling the overall shape and theme(s) of The Devil is Dead trilogy (never mind the whole cycle). I'm not really going to buck that trend in this blog post.  I'll mostly be skirting like the rest. But I do hope that at the end of this whole 'Reading the Argo Cycle' blog series, when I've had a chance to lay out lots of long bloody slabs of prose from each of the books and reflect on these passages, that I'll have acquired the courage to take a shot at something like a more comprehensive review that tries to grasp what in the world the trilogy's all about.

For now, let me sketch a few thoughts.  First of all, I think it's worth noting that these books are examples of Lafferty's historical fiction.  They're mostly set in middle America (USA) but there are recurring episodes abroad, mostly on islands and coasts, including Mexico, South America, Africa, Australia, and the South Pacific.  They roughly take place from around the 1920s to the early 1950s. More Than Melchisedech's first book, Tales of Chicago, dips into slightly earlier territory for the Bildungsroman-like moments of Melchisedech Duffey's early biography.  And MTM's third book, Argo, dips forward into several possible near futures.  But the bulk of the first two volumes of the trilogy, Archipelago and The Devil is Dead, take place in WWII and post-WWII eras, the 40s and 50s.  After Duffey's early years are accounted for in More Than Melchisedech, the action, if I remember correctly, moves progressively through the 1920s, 30s, 40s, and 50s.  (So if you wanted to read the trilogy in exact chronological order, I think you'd have to do something like start with Tales of Chicago and then alternate between chapters of Archipelago and Tales of Midnight, then read The Devil is Dead and then finish with Argo.  Reading those latter two volumes directly together strikes me as an exciting prospect as they are the two most adventuresome.)

That said, the trilogy is decidedly a historical fantasy of sorts.  Sometimes it hews closer to something like magical realism, where the marvels are woven closely into a 'mundane' narrative.  Many pages can go by with little to no hint of the marvelous (aside from Lafferty's language or characters or sense of oddball farce and satire or poignant meditations on time and humanity).  Other times it is closer to a 20th century myth or fable or legend, by turns soaring close to epic heroic fantasy only to slip, often suddenly, into something like the grotesqueries of the New Weird or Bizarro fiction.

In fact, it now strikes me that the trilogy progressively transitions from least fantastical to most fantastical.  Archipelago is the most like magical realism (I'd rather call it mythical realism) and thus the furthest away from a work of fantasy per se.  (I know some balk at the distinction between magical realism and fantasy, averring that the former is simply ashamed of being the latter.  But I taste something different between the two modes, though both trade in the super-mundane.) Archipelago occasionally shifts into pure fable and at times it asserts preternatural qualities of time and personhood. But the bulk of it narrates, though oddly, the regular lives of (albeit unusual) people.

Specifically marvelous episodes are also sparse in The Devil is Dead, but its plot and premise are far more thoroughly fantastical, involving a separate race of quasi-human beings with preternatural powers (this could also, of course, be considered science-fictional).  I seem to recall there is some body swapping and other normally impossible elements.  Its narration also involves far more fabulistic language, where characters are referred to as mermaids and gargoyles and devils and so on in a way that hovers strangely between metaphor and myth and realism.  Its plot mechanics are also overtly heroic and questing and quixotic.  Thus the whole feels much more like a fantasy, even a high fantasy of sorts, but one peopled by 'low' characters, a working class heroic fantasy if you will.  And quite charming for that.  (I would add also that, though it's narratively the tightest book of the trilogy, it's also the most intentionally disorienting, having a sense of dark but often humorous mystery along the lines of something like David Lynch's Twin Peaks.)

More Than Melchisedech can exhibit both of its preceding volumes' modes, sometimes magically real for chapters at a time, describing rowdy urban merchant life among friends and colleagues in the first half of the 20th century with the occasional insertion of a monster man (Finnegan's father Giulio) or perhaps a bit of clairvoyance or the like in a manner similar to Archipelago (but coming across as less psychologically rich than Archipelago and in something more of an almost slapstick mode).  When MTM is more in the quixotic mode of The Devil is Dead, it is also far more overtly a full-on fantasy. Events become utterly magical or miraculous, where Melchisedech can clap his hands together to produce gold coins or can summon black giants to his aid, sometimes seen by others and sometimes not, but effective nonetheless.  And while The Devil is Dead is no stranger to the grotesque or uncanny, MTM ratchets this up even closer to borderline horror (but again in something closer to slapstick, hence the feel at times of something like Bizarro fiction).  These fantastical and grotesque elements seem to increase in each book of MTM until the final book, Argo, is a complete science fiction/fantasy/horror tale.

So the above thoughts are first attempts at plumbing the styles and modes and genres of the trilogy. What about themes or overall shape?  That's a lot, lot tougher.  You might well say that The Devil is Dead trilogy is Lafferty's most overt (albeit symbolic and emblematic) engagement with his own upbringing and pre-authorial years, an attempt to capture the half century that made him who he was; and then a transitioning into his most overt (and even more symbolic and emblematic) engagement with his life as an author, a creator of characters, a builder of worlds; and then finally, an engagement with his own mortality and hopes for immortality, both ontological and authorial.  That seems like at least one legitimate way to interpret the trilogy.  There's no doubt in my mind that Lafferty is essentially Melchisedech Duffey and that perhaps Finnegan is all that Lafferty hoped for his body of work and its best elements.  He knew that both he and his art were split-off (to use his own term in the trilogy) and uncertain and wracked by self-doubt and shortcomings and yet totally special and unique and powerful and game-changing masterpieces, if only they could come to full light and full realisation.  And as he reflects on the this trilogy of personal wrestlings in the form of universal yet idiosyncratic myth, he writes in his concluding essay that he has realised he has written the story of all persons whatsoever.  Every single person is a haunted, torn genius and so overflowing and multi-faceted that no one account (perhaps no one lifetime or timeline or corporeality) could possibly capture him or her.  And this resplendence and spectrality of character is what all people have in common.  No exceptions.  Their uncontainable and riven genius is what unites them across all times and locations.  And Lafferty means this quite literally, even while he states it in semi-symbolic and semi-ludic language. I'll conclude this post with his own words:

It is established that the human race is made up entirely of glowing geniuses. That's something. And it's pretty well established that the begeniused human race is totally ghostly in all the meanings of the word, that it is overflowing so that very often persons cannot be contained in a single body, that it runs pretty much on multiple and parallel tracks. It's agreed that every human person is really two or three different persons when in an overflowing mood. [...] In all meaningful moments a human may be seen in his multiplicity. [...] The people of the world are none of them common, are all of them geniuses, are all of them wonderful. So the power is always there, and the great overspilling of the multiplicity and the power. All the people are ghostly, and all of them are split or exploding people. They have rapport with all their fellows in time and in space, with all of them now in the world, with all of them who have been or will be in the world. (Argo, pp. 143-145)

Short Story Review # 8: Heart Of Stone, Dear (1983)

3/5

This is a rare one, existing only the Chris Drumm booklet of the same name (and now in a nicely made electronic 'pirated' collection).  To me, this is one of Lafferty's tales full of singular and memorable elements that nevertheless doesn't quite hold together as an all round solid story.  It is definitely of interest in that it is woven of many fibres that overlap with the rest of Lafferty's fiction. For example, it features a central and likeable Syrian character as do a number of Lafferty's other stories and novels (e.g. 'Funnyfingers' and Fourth Mansions). (The relevance of this Syrian character for current news is not lost on me.  See my comments about this at the end of this review.)  It features a heist as do many Lafferty stories in one form or another (again 'Hands of the Man' comes to mind). It includes a giant livestock-eating bird as does the, to me, superior story 'Oh Tell Me Will It Freeze Tonight'. And it mentions the failure to reach the Second Age of Benevolent Magic, a phrase which ties it to 'In Deepest Glass' and perhaps other stories.  It deals with a magical Islamic relic and is also a Philosopher's Stone story (I'm not sure how much these overlap with similar elements elsewhere in Lafferty's fiction).  And it's another of Lafferty's stories of youthful unrequited love, again connecting it to 'Funnyfingers' as well as 'Eurema's Dam' and others.  Makes you wonder what Laff's own youthful experience was with the amorous.

The other central character introduced in the second half of the story, Alfred Freck, a 'thin little boy with red hair' and 'colorless gray eyes', is interesting as well.  Alfred embodies the general geologophilia permeating all of Lafferty's fiction, but also more specifically the ideas of living and 'remembering' stones that Lafferty broaches in various stories such as 'From The Thunder Colt's Mouth', 'Love Affair With Ten Thousand Springs', and 'Bank and Shoal of Time'.  This gives Lafferty and opportunity to make one of his many, many rhapsodic lists of erudition:

He was very lucky in his collecting. He said that the special stones called to him to come and get them. He had hundreds of garnets, red and orange (his red hair was the exact color of orange garnet) and black and green and almost colorless gray. This latter is the gray that sometimes clarifies; it is mostly found in spherical or ‘onion’ crystal. It is the ‘Crystal Ball rock’, and is also the exact color of Alfred Freck's gray eyes. 

Alfred had garnets that were more than a foot in diameter. He had emeralds and rubies, jade-stones and opal-stones. He understood the stones and could recognize all of them when they were still imbedded in their clay. Some of them were remembering stones and some of them were whispering stones. They told him about the big stone that is the Emperor of all the stones on the Earth.

There's a lot of other delightful and magical imagery.  It's a work of fantasy proper by Laff, I'd say, which is slightly rare in his body of work it seems to me.  Most things he writes can either very roughly fit into some kind of broadly science-fictional scheme or are more historical fiction in nature, with elements of folklore and magical realism (not quite the same thing as fantasy in my opinion). But this 20th century Arabian-American wonder story is solidly fantasy.  (It goes nicely with 'Phoenic' in that regard I'd say.)

One last thing I want to say.  With this week's news about refugees ringing in my ears, I can't help but be struck that I'm reading a story by an Oklahoma Catholic Irishman, which features a sympathetic Syrian character - as I've said, it's a recurring phenomenon in Lafferty's fiction.  It is just such curious and generous portraits of our racial others that can widen our empathies, preparing us for just and compassionate attitudes and actions toward our global neighbours.  May this kind of racially empathetic imagination increase and may our hearts of stone be replaced with hearts of flesh (a biblical allusion of which I doubt Lafferty was unaware).

* 'Heart of Stone, Dear' discussion on Facebook

Offering a few of my extra copies of Lafferty as perks...

Well, I'm offering a few of my extra copies of Lafferty books as perks for contributors to my Indiegogo PhD campaign: www.indiegogo.com/projects/ecomonstrous-phd. I was writing up a wee piece about it to put on that site, but found it didn't really fit there. So I'm putting it here! It's always fun for a rabid Lafferty fan to have an excuse to sum up the genius of Lafferty and his works. Here it is:

I’ve suggested that what makes this PhD unique is not only the idea of the ‘ecomonstrous’ itself, but also that one of the main authors being researched is the largely unknown R. A. Lafferty (1914-2002).  Despite his obscurity, Lafferty has some famous and influential fans among his cult following. Neil Gaiman, Harlan Ellison, Gene Wolfe, and even the actor Bill Hader have all gushed about how Lafferty was a literary ‘mad genius’.  

Take Gaiman’s obituary for Lafferty in the Washington Post:  

‘R.A. Lafferty [...] was undoubtedly the finest writer of whatever it was that he did that ever there was. He was a genius, an oddball, a madman. His stories [...] are without precedent [...] comparisons are pointless. The world only got one Lafferty. [...] Funny, wise and odd, his tales are unique. [...] He was a genre in himself, and a Lafferty story is unlike any story by anybody else: tall tales from the Irish by way of Heaven, the far stars and Tulsa, Okla.’

Or take Bill Hader’s characteristically funny comments about Lafferty’s fiction in the New York Times in 2008:

‘It’s hilarious, incredibly funny and at the same time it’s insanely dark. [...] You get such a sense of joy and boundless imagination in every sentence – even if the story doesn’t totally cohere, you feel like it’s about something. It’s so incredibly Tulsa. You get that feeling when you see a Flaming Lips show. It’s not like we’re dark and hurt and twisted. It’s like, “I’ve got blood on my face – come on, y’all, this is awesome.”’

Alas, Lafferty is almost totally out of print these days, except for expensive limited edition print runs. Used copies of his books from the 60s to the 80s can be very expensive. Lafferty’s odd genius is probably most easily encountered in the hundreds of short stories he wrote, but the only extra copies I have available are of a few of his novels.  They’ll throw you in the deep end with Lafferty, but I’ve heard of quite a number of fans first encountering him through his novels and becoming hooked.  So for the more daring among you, here’s your chance to give it a go!  (Or for the Lafferty fans already out there, a chance to pick up a title or two you may not’ve managed to obtain yet.)

(click on photo for larger, clearer image)

• Past Master (1968) - x 2 - Utopia in the future, on another planet:  time travel, monsters, androids, aliens, spaceships - but in a way only Lafferty could do!  Bizarre journeys, sardonic homilies, gory battles, and weird wonders!  Philosophies and grotesqueries galore!  And more! (Plus, you gotta love the pulpy cover of this 1970s mass-market paperback edition.)

• Not To Mention Camels (1976) - This is truly one of Lafferty’s WEIRDEST works.  It makes Past Master look like a conventional novel.  It’s about multiple worlds, written in a highly analytical and yet bloody way as only Lafferty would write it. A bit of a brain-melter to be honest. Its anti-hero is a particularly unlikable politician jumping from one version of himself to another in different versions of the worlds - and sometimes the utterly freakish places between worlds.  It gets pretty gruesome and dark at moments, but its biting satire of personality cults and media lords can be kind of wickedly funny, and its wilder passages provide their own grotesque pleasures.  If you read it, you definitely have to round it out with some of Lafferty’s more redemptive works.  (This copy’s a print-on-demand paperback from 2000 by Wildside Press, but I actually kind of like this cover art.)

• Okla Hannali (1972) - This novel is a different kettle of fish from the previous two.  It may well someday find its place in the canon of 20th century American Literature alongside other classics of the American frontier.  It’s the only book of Lafferty’s that has actually never gone out of print.  It’s a work of historical fiction about the 19th century Choctaw tribe, especially one Paul Bunyan-esque leader and his family, but it mixes in elements of ‘tall tales’ and folklore in such a way that makes it something of a rare example of ‘magical realism’ from the USA.  It is tragic, poignant, comic, thrilling, consciousness-raising, and historically astute by turns. I found that its cumulative effect stirred me with both melancholy and wonder. It genuinely deserves to be more widely known.  (This is a fairly sturdy print-on-demand paperback from the University of Oklahoma Press.)

Short Story Review # 1: Phoenic' (1960)

The Facebook group East of Laughter: An Appreciation of R. A. Lafferty is now running a weekend reading club.  A story is selected and discussed there weekly.  I'm going to see if I can keep up with it and post my own thoughts on each story here, along with a rating out of 5 stars.  There's already been great discussion there and I'll continue to be a part of that.  But I want to keep a record of some of my own thoughts here as well.  For each story I review here, I'll include a link to the discussion of it in Facebook group and, when available, a link to Andrew Ferguson's review of the story on his Lafferty blog Continued On Next Rock, and a link to the story's comment thread on ralafferty.org as well, which I think is the most public, accessible, permanent place to keep a record of open, ongoing discussion of the stories.  (And perhaps occasionally I'll also link to reviews of the stories elsewhere on the web that I might have run into.)

Up first is one of the diminishing number of Lafferty's stories that I had never read before:  'Phoenic''.

Pheonic' (1960) 3/5

I think this is a delightful tale, definitely a new personal favourite in the Lafferty canon.  It is a redemptive sartorial retelling of the phoenix legend, stitching together Pagan, Jewish, and Christian mythos, even stitching together science fiction and fantasy.  It's fairly loose, not as tight and deep as some other tales from this earliest era of Lafferty's writing, such as 'Snuffles' (1960) and 'Through Other Eyes' (1960), but the prose is strong and the imagination unique (the brief mermaid yarn being one of my favourite moments in Lafferty).  It sits nicely alongside Lafferty's other seafaring/seaside tales such as 'Groaning Hinges of the World', 'Cliffs That Laughed', 'The Ugly Sea', and 'Configuration of the North Shore'.  The Phoenician main character could be another 'odd one' collected by Sour John (see the opening of Lafferty's short story 'One At a Time').  Its theme of renewal, both creative and spiritual, was genuinely poignant to me.  The only real criticism I have of it is that the clothing technology at the end seemed just a little - but only a little - cheesy and of its late 50s/early 60s time.  But even that impression was largely subsumed by the resurrection language for me and by feeling the resonance this ending achieved as regards renewed creative productivity.  There was an ambiguity or ambivalence about an aspect of this ending though:  the last line is 'Whence is this newness?' and I think Lafferty means it as a genuine question that the reader must get involved with.  Normally Lafferty uses fashion trends as foils for truth and beauty, trends to be lampooned and subverted (see, for example, 'About a Secret Crocodile', 'The Man With the Aura', Not To Mention Camels, etc.).  Either he hadn't yet decided that would be a major running theme or he introduces it here more ambiguously, calling on the reader to declare 'whence this newness' and thus either validate or invalidate the renewed lines of creative clothing as arising either from false or true springs.  Lafferty often deals in such ambiguous, participatory story-endings, so that would be no surprise.  Even so, I think there is a note of genuine spirituality here, even if it is wrestling with mere trendiness.  It's a theme very relevant to our present time of viral meme-think and hashtag wars and the like.


* Facebook discussion of Pheonic'

* Phoenic' entry at Continued On Next Rock blog

* Phoenic' comments at ralafferty.org

Lafferty and Eucatastrophe

'Fairy tale' is a category I've rarely if ever heard used when discussing Lafferty - tall tales and myths, yes. But not fairy tales. I, however, have been struck with a certain fairy tale quality (mixed with all theother resonances) from my earliest reading of Lafferty's stories. At any rate, I will from time to time reference the following excerpt from Tolkien's seminal essay on the fairy tale and so am posting it here. (The last sentence of the second paragraph is perhaps the most significant in direct relation to what Lafferty is doing.)

But the “consolation” of fairy-tales has another aspect than the imaginative satisfaction of ancient desires. Far more important is the Consolation of the Happy Ending. Almost I would venture to assert that all complete fairy-stories must have it. At least I would say that Tragedy is the true form of Drama, its highest function; but the opposite is true of Fairystory. Since we do not appear to possess a word that expresses this opposite—I will call it Eucatastrophe. The eucatastrophic tale is the true form of fairy-tale, and its highest function.

The consolation of fairy-stories, the joy of the happy ending: or more correctly of the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous “turn” (for there is no true end to any fairy-tale): this joy, which is one of the things which fairy-stories can produce supremely well, is not essentially “escapist,” nor “fugitive.” In its fairy-tale—or otherworld—setting, it is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur. It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.

It is the mark of a good fairy-story, of the higher or more complete kind, that however wild its events, however fantastic or terrible the adventures, it can give to child or man that hears it, when the “turn” comes, a catch of the breath, a beat and lifting of the heart, near to (or indeed accompanied by) tears, as keen as that given by any form of literary art, and having a peculiar quality…

In such stories when the sudden “turn” comes we get a piercing glimpse of joy, and heart's desire, that for a moment passes outside the frame, rends indeed the very web of story, and lets a gleam come through.

–J. R. R. Tolkien, ‘On Fairy Stories’ (1947) – see especially the section toward the end of the paper entitled ‘Recover, Escape, Consolation’

Creative fantasy, because it is trying to… make something new… may open your hoard and let all the locked things fly away like cage-birds. The gems all turn into flowers or flames, and you will be warned that all you had (or knew) was dangerous and potent, not really effectively chained, free and wild; no more yours than they were you.

-ibid.

Riddle-Writers of the Isthmus

Riddle-Writers of the Isthmus
By
R. A. Lafferty

The title comes from a verse work, An Essay on Man, by Alexander Pope:

“Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise and rudely great…
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled:
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world.”

We aren’t really the ‘Sole judge of truth’. And we are hurled in ‘temporary’ and not in ‘endless’ error. But most of the rest of it applies to us humans accurately. We are beings darkly wise and rudely great. And even if our glory is pretty spotted, we are indeed the jest and riddle of the world. And one of the tall labors assigned to us is reading the riddle of the world and of ourselves.

One side of this riddle-solving is named ‘science’, and another side is named ‘intuition’. But it has several other sides, both brighter and darker. The riddle itself is a many-sided thing. We lack even a clear statement of the riddle, or of the story of it. There is dispute about the riddle, or of the story of it. There is dispute about its shape and appearance. But various obscure mirrors held up by riddle-writers do give a mottled view of this authentic history of the world. The riddle-writers are in every field, and they are busy in several of the areas of Science Fiction. The works of all the riddle-writers are really garbled ‘Remembrances of Great Things Past’.

All of them write scraps of the History of the World in riddle form. All of them spin theories of what mankind really is, what the true appearance of mankind may be, what its purpose and plight add up to, who its nearest kindred are. And all of the riddle-writers essentially agree on at least the first of the several parts of The Only True History of the World and of the Lords of the World. All of them agree (though some of them try to deny it in their less intelligent moments) that there was a Fall from a higher and more pleasant place to a lower and less pleasant.

The ‘After the Catastrophe’ stories of which there are so many in modern Science Fiction are really ‘After the Fall’ stories or ‘Love in the Ruins’ stories. Many of the riddle-writers place the Fall correctly near the beginning of the human affair. Others place it in the near-present or in the near or far future.

Most agree that there is an amnesia about the Fall, that it has been forced out of our conventional memory and thus has become the most enigmatic part of the life riddle. Most hint that the Fall has a certain dark grandeur and renown about it.

Some people swear that the Fall is nowhere in history, nor in clear memory, nor in vestige, and nowhere in common sense. But it is in psychology, and in clouded memory, and in inherited folk impressions.

Any competent practitioner of History will know that ‘The Fall of Man’ is there and that perhaps it is the event that divides history from pre-history. Any competent practitioner of anthropology will know that man cannot be described without stating that he is ‘The Fallen Creature’.

“Hold! Go no further!” upset people cry out. “You are coming too near to the subject named ‘religion’!”

“Yes, ‘Religion’ is one of the taboo words that modern science fictioneers may not think nor say, unless they use it to mean something else. The selective speculation which they are allowed will not stretch far enough to allow religion itself, not far enough to see that we have passed the Isthmus and have only to take off our handcuffs and blindfolds to be free. In this, the narrowness, Science Fiction stands where much science stood a hundred years ago and where almost all pseudo-science still stands today.

But the theme of the Fall in the deep past is implicit in most of the central works of science fiction and in virtually all of the fringe works. It is the breath of life of High Fantasy. It is the ‘memory of Magic’ behind all sword-and-sorcery. The idea of a humanity both taller and deeper and more inclusive than now, of the time when animals were somehow contained in mankind, is echoed in the Tarzan stories, in the Planet-of-the-Apes pieces, in the Island-of-Doctor-Moreau pastiches. The idea of humanity still containing a spirit world, a supernatural world as well as a preternatural world, a ghostly as well as a poltergeistly world, is the theme of all the Tales-of-the-Uncanny-and-Supernatural, or all Tales-of-the-Mysterious-and-Macabre, of all Great-Tales-of-Terror-and-the-Unearthly, of all Weird Tales, of all Great-Ghost-Stories-of-the-Gas-Light-Era.

The fascination of the tales about space travel echoes the times when we really could travel through deep space effortlessly, instantly, and without vehicles.

The fascination of designing new fantasy worlds echoes the time when our own world was new for an immeasurable period of time, when it had a million different aspects and could present a different one every minute.

The fascination of new inventions echoes the time when to think was to invent, when to conceive was to construct with no interval at all in between, the time when man was given dominion over all the world.

The fascination with ecological fantasies echoes the time when the lion really did lie down with the lamb and eat straw like an ox, when it had not yet rained in the world but “…a mist rose from the earth and watered all the surface of the ground…”

Once we were a more intricate species than we are now.

Once time stood still when we ordered it to do so.

Once we had the Midas Touch, the transmuting touch.

Once we could walk through walls, or walk on water.

Once we could move mountains.

All these things remain as normal but occluded powers of mankind, as true attributes of mankind. But humankind came to an abnormal situation and place, to the narrow isthmus of the middle state where the full normal powers are inhibited.

Who are we really, we who could normally do all those things? Who we are is part of the answer to the riddle.

How did we get onto the isthmus? We fell onto it.

How do we get off of this isthmus? We solve the riddles, or we accept the solutions that stand ready and waiting. Then we discover that we are already off the isthmus.

The implausibility of almost every Science Fiction or Fantasy story lies in the answer to the riddle being readily available, and not being grasped.

The real difficulty is that we have looked back, not at the ‘first state of magic’, but at the isthmus of the middle state where magic is forbidden. And in looking back we are turned into pillars of salt.

But even that need not be fatal. Remember that once we could turn into anything at all, and then turn back again. We have already left the uninspiring isthmus or we could not be looking back at it.

Is this that I have just written no more than a very poor Science Fiction story in the guise of an article? Very likely it is. And yet, very poor story that it may be, it is the synopsis of ‘The Only True History of the World and of the Lords of the World’.

Once we were indeed Lords of the World because we were at one with the world.

Once time stood still when we ordered it to do so. It still does.

Once we had the transmuting touch. We have it yet.

Once we could walk through walls. We can still do it, if we disregard the caveat of the skeptic who says “When you’ve walked through one wall you’ve walked through them all.”

Once we could move mountains. Haven’t you heard the Good News? We can still move them.

Who are we who can do all these things, except that we have half forgotten that we can do them?

There is one good Science Fiction story that I haven’t gotten around to writing. It’s about the hero-adventurer who answered all the ten thousand riddles except one, and each one was more difficult than the one before it. He answered all of them except the final one, which had also been the one before the first one. No wonder it sounded familiar! That question which stopped him was and remains:

“What is your own name?”

If he can answer that last question, then he can win all the prizes there are. Why does he hesitate when it is so easy?

[March 21, 1980]

-R. A. Lafferty, It’s Down the Slippery Cellar Stairs: R. A. Lafferty Non-fiction (1984), Drumm booklet No. 14, pp. 18-21

This article is one of the pieces of which the inside cover says: these ‘essays, reviews and articles were written as columns for the Italian fanzine, Alien.’

Back cover: ‘Starting with the much-acclaimed Past Master in 1968, at least 19 books by R. A. Lafferty have been published. He has entertained a faithful band of enthusiast with his fertile imaginative gifts and his great spirit of play. These qualities are on full display in the essays, reviews and articles contained herein.’